God's Provision - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, October 26. Believers know that God is in control, so that means we can be at peace even when we're the most helpless. Let's wrap up the series on the storms of life with a reminder of God's loving compassion.

God initiates for us not to accomplish something in our life. But what I want to talk about in this message is this, and that is God's provision for us when we face the storms of life. Probably one of the best illustrations of that is found in a night of real storm on the Sea of Galilee to be found in the 14th chapter of Matthew. We'll turn to that 14th chapter, and let's look at this stormy night when Jesus and His disciples met together in a very unusual situation.

Jesus has been healing and teaching, and now He has fed the 5,000. And when He finishes, if you'll notice in verse 22, the Scripture says, And immediately He made the disciples get into the boat, and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes away. And after He had sent the multitudes away, He went up to the mountain by Himself to pray. And when it was evening, He was there alone.

But the boat was already many steadier, or several miles away from the land, battered by the waves, for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch, somewhere around three o'clock in the morning, fourth watch of the night, He came to them walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were frightened, saying, It is a ghost, and they cried out for fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid. And Peter answered Him and said, Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water. And He said, Come. And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

But seeing the wind, he became afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand and took hold of His hand and said to him, O you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got in the boat, the wind stopped. And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, You are certainly God's Son.

And when they had a cross over, they came to the land at Gennesaret. Now, the most important thing God could provide for you and me in the midst of a storm is, first of all, the awareness of His presence. So I want you to jot down presence, the awareness of His presence. Nothing, nowhere under any condition could be as important when you and I are going through a storm as the awareness of the presence of God. No storm can drive Jesus out of your life. And because He's there, He is there for eternity.

He says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. The Holy Spirit will come and be in you, with you and upon you. That is, you and I never go through a storm of which He is not in the middle of. Now, we've never been in anything apart from Him since the moment you and I trust that Jesus Christ is our Savior. Number two, the second thing I believe He provides for us is a pathway through that storm. If He is the sovereign of the seas and the sovereign of our life, there is no time when He's not in absolute control. And being in absolute control of our life, there is no time when He is not guiding those storms. He will make the storm take us exactly where He wants us to go, because you see, He is in sovereign control and He is our presence. That is, wherever we are, the Lord Jesus Christ is there.

And so they didn't know what was going on. And when you and I think about troubles and trials and difficulties and hardships and storms in our life, you may feel at times, Oh, Lord, what are you doing? Where is this leading? Where are we going?

How is this going to end up? And we may have lots of questions. And He is under no obligation to give us all the answers ahead of time. All we have to remember is this. He holds the future and He who holds the future holds us. And if He who holds the future holds us and He who holds the future and holds us is living on the inside of us. We can trust the future to Him no matter what. We can trust Him because He's that kind of a sovereign God. He is that kind of a sovereign captain of our soul.

There is a third word I want you to jot down. That is His protection. He always protects us in any and every storm. Remember we said His storms, if He initiates them or even if He allows Satan to send them or whatever, is never for the purpose of sinking us. Always for the purpose of sanctifying us. That is all of His storms have purposes in them.

Now what I want you to notice is this. He protected all those men in the boat. They were safe in the boat. Here's Peter walking on the water. Now Peter was walking on the water and everything looked real good for just a few moments there. Until he took his eyes off the Lord Jesus.

And when he took his eyes off the Lord and put them on the circumstances, he did exactly what you and I do. He is walking on water until he begins to focus on the circumstances. Because the circumstances reminded him of how deep that water was. And these waves.

And so it begins to sink. You say, wait a minute, I thought the step here was his protection, right? And he did protect Peter. He let Peter go down far enough for Peter to recognize how absolutely hopeless and helpless he was in that storm. And he cried out, Lord Jesus save me.

The Bible says the Lord reached forth his hand and took him and pulled him out. You and I never have to look for the hand of Jesus. We don't ever have to look for that. You know why?

Here's the reason. The moment you trusted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, the Lord Jesus Christ got an eternal grip on you. And it doesn't make any difference what goes on in your life. You'll never be out of the eternal loving grip of Christ Jesus, the Lord. We may cry out Lord save us, but you know what? Jesus doesn't have to reach out and do anything to us because he is living on the inside of us, our very savior himself. He's our savior, our Lord and our master.

He said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. And that being the case, we don't ever have to wonder about whether he'll show up on time or not, whether he'll show up at all or not, whether he has the power to save us or not, or whether he'll have to reach out and grab hold of us. Listen, we are never out of the reach of Almighty God because he's already gripped us once and for all when we trusted him as our savior. We live under his divine protection all times. Look if you go to the hundred twenty first Psalm. He says, I will lift up my eyes to the mountains from whence shall come my help. He used to be reading that saying like this, I will lift up my eyes to the mountains from whence shall my help come? Question mark.

It isn't coming from the mountains. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper.

The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all evil. He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.

That was written by a man who knew exactly what it meant to live in a storm day after day, month after month, year after year. David understood what storms he says he will protect you. Go back, if you will, to Isaiah chapter forty three.

He says in verse one. But now thus says the Lord, your creator, old Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name.

You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched.

Look at that. He didn't say run through the fire. He said you can walk through the fire. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched.

You won't even be able to smell any smoke. Nor will the flame burn you, for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Now, as I think about the storms that we go through in life and as I think about the storms that these men were going through, a physical storm, and think about how God works in our life, I want to make a statement here, and I want you to remember this. It is much safer to be the target of the storm than to be the cause of the storm. It is much safer to be the target of the storm than the instigator or the initiate of the storm.

Always safer to be the target. The Lord Jesus Christ has promised to protect us, promised every single moment of our life. He says I will never leave you nor forsake you. And these men understood, having experienced the Lord Jesus Christ in His miraculous power, showing up just what they thought was in the nick of time in God's perfect time to accomplish His purpose. What's the first word? His presence. What's the second word? His path. And what's the third word? His protection. The fourth word is something you would expect naturally, and that is His peace. Because the Scripture says, when they got in the boat, the wind stopped. Now, here's what I want you to remember.

Listen carefully. Our peace is not dependent upon the removal of the storm. Our peace is not dependent upon the removal of the storm. Our peace isn't dependent upon the quieting of the storm.

Our peace is based on something that has nothing to do with external circumstances. That's why He says, don't look about you. He says, I am your God. I will strengthen you.

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Now, if our peace was dependent upon the absence of storms in our life, remember what we said in the very beginning? That for most people, we are either in one, I just came out of one, or going into one. Then if that's true, then we'd have no peace. And the word peace means to bind together. And that is, you and I are bound together with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He who is the great peacemaker, and He who is peace Himself, the very Prince of Peace, He is the one who is indwelling us, living on the inside of us.

It was the presence of Jesus, the peacemaker, the one who had, listen, could make peace in the sea and peace in their heart that brought them to a place of calmness and quietness in their heart that day. And you see, nobody else can give us peace. Our peace is the result of a relationship. And if our peace is the result of a relationship, what we made you on is not fixing the storm, what we made you on is keeping the relationship right. And that relationship is one of intimacy and dependence and trust and recognition of our absolute total dependence upon Him in every single situation and circumstance of life.

The fifth word is this. One of the things He provides in the storms of our life is the potential to grow strong in our Christian life. The potential to grow strong in our Christian life. That's what storms are all about. Storms are God's exercises in your life and mine to strengthen the vital part of us that is not the soul but the spirit of a man, the spirit of a woman.

These storms that come into our life, God has a very specific purpose for them. Now, when you look at these men and look at this passage of Scripture and think about their potential to grow, I think one of the things that He saw was an opportunity for them to understand more fully who He is. Now, He could tell them I'm the Messiah, but their ideas of the Messiah were all Old Testament ideas. And He could tell them that He was the Son of God.

Well, how do you prove that? And He could tell them many things about Himself. The Lord Jesus had to demonstrate to them. That is, this was an opportunity for them to take a tremendous leap forward in their understanding and recognition of who Jesus was. And so that was part of their growth, recognizing who He is more fully, that He controls the seas, not only the Creator of them, but He's the controller of them. The second thing was that they understood more about His ways. They had seen people come to Him and say, of leprosy, can't hear whatever it might be.

And He would touch this one, speak that and all the rest. This time, He did not show up on their schedule and so they began to see how He works. They began to see the ways of God. The very fact that He would ask Peter, come and walk on the water, was their way of recognizing that sometimes He will ask us to take awesome challenges to our faith, to say yes to Him. And we, there's no way to say our way clear.

It looks dangerous or whatever, and deep. And yet, they began to learn. They learned an awesome amount. In fact, it was one of those unforgettable, motivating learning experiences in their life that I'm sure they told their children, their grandchildren, their great-great grandchildren, ever how long they lived. I'm sure that everybody who knew these men knew this story of Jesus walking on the water. They would never forget that. But you know something else they learned that day?

They learned the awesome love of Jesus for them. He loved them so much. Looking, piercing right through the darkness because it wasn't dark to Him. He could see exactly where they were, what was going on.

And what did He do? He came upon the scene in time to rescue them, to save them, to comfort them, to increase their confidence and their assurance, and to bolster them up and remind them that they had a loving Heavenly Father who can see right through the darkest of all storms and see exactly where we are and always be there right on perfect time. They understood that.

Now let me ask you a question. When you and I go through storms, what do we learn? It's always an opportunity to grow. We will grow if we respond properly. We will fail the wonderful opportunity of taking leaps forward in our spiritual growth if we don't respond correctly.

And what is that right response? Trust Him. Fully trusting, fully dependent, fully surrendered, fully focused on Him. We will learn what God wants us to learn in the process. We will grow in our experience with Him. We'll grow in our understanding of who He is.

Because you see, so many times people read the Bible and say, yeah, I believe all that. But you see, how much do we know about Him until we experience some things? When do you and I learn the most about who Jesus Christ is? When we get in a storm and we feel what they felt, helpless and hopeless. God, if you do not rescue me, there will be no rescue.

We have the same opportunity they had, the same opportunity to learn, the same opportunity to grow. He is the Son of God. He is omnipotent. He is exactly who He says He is.

They learned that. And to see the demonstrations of His awesome power in your life, all of us can look back in times in our lives when we've been in those situations and we have seen God show up, so to speak, end quote. He showed up and He did something that was so miraculous you and I would never have been able to figure out how or what He would do. But He always shows up. He always reveals Himself because He's always there working in our life.

Doing what? Making us aware of His ways, making us aware of His presence, making us aware of His power, making us aware that He loves us absolutely unconditionally. He's always there because He wants us to grow, grow in our faith in Him, growing our dependence upon Him, grow in our absolute total recognition of His Lordship and mastery over our life, that we are absolutely and totally surrendered to Him.

That's what He's looking for. And so when we come to those stormy times in our life, then He uses the storm as a tool to grow us up and to deepen us and to strengthen us. It is His exercise in our life to make us to become the persons He wants us to be. Never even crosses His mind to sink us, but always to buoy us up and to get us to the port that He has in mind. Now, you may be one of those persons who says, well, you know, I've never trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior.

And so how do I know how to respond to this? Well, you see, you're in a storm, my friend, and that storm is ultimately going to sink you unless you get in the boat. And that boat is trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, depending upon Him.

And you say, well, how do I do that? You believe the testimony of Scripture that the Bible says that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He went to the cross of Calvary and laid down His life to pay your sin debt in full. And paying your sin debt in full, the moment you ask Him to forgive you of your sins and to come into your life and to save you, in that moment He will. And that's as if you got in the boat with Jesus and from that moment on, He has an eternal grip of love on you and forever you may go through storm after storm, but you will never sink because you can't sink the Son of the living God.

You cannot sink Him. God is willing to see you through the storm. You know the song, How Firm a Foundation. That soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, He will not, He will not desert to its foes. That soul though all hell shall endeavor to shake, He says, I'll never, I'll never, I'll never forsake. That is the promise of our Father. Thank you for listening to The Storms of Life. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.